Our trip to school

Children are a vital part of our Tranzsend family. In this article, the children of some of our tranzsend workers share something of their life overseas.

How do you get to school or work? Do you travel through the city with traffic jams or stay in the countryside? Do you walk, bike, bus, or travel by car?

We thought we would tell you about our trip to school. Our school is in another city about a fifty-minute drive away. School starts at 8am, so we get up early to be in the car by 6:50am.

As we drive to school we look out the window and see many different things. We see the man at the basket shop giving alms to the monks. We watch him put bags of rice in their bowls and kneel down to pray, hoping to gain merit for his family so they will have a good life.

We drive past temples and, if we are in a taxi, we hear our taxi driver toot the horn to pay his respects as we pass by.

We pass lots and lots of rice fields. We see people working hard, bending over to plant, weed, and harvest their precious crop. We notice how the fields change colour as the rice grows and how they fill with water during the rainy season.

We drive past buffaloes lying in the mud and cows eating grass; the crowded markets selling fresh fruit and vegetables; small factories making bricks with smoke billowing from their fires.

We watch the covered trucks filled with children going to their schools, some sitting close to the edge of the truck looking like they might fall off.

We stop at the traffic lights knowing we will have people wanting to sell us strings of flowers to bring us blessings for our journey. Mum chats to them briefly before they rush off to sell to the car in front of us. We see the driver hang the flowers in their car, pausing to pray before doing so.

We arrive at school and watch as Thai families bow to the spirit-house at the front gate to show their respect to the guardian spirit of the land.

Our drive to school is long, but as we watch the things happening outside the window we learn about things that are important to the people who live here.

We see how hard they work and how they feel they always need to please the spirits to try to gain merit. We know that many of them have never heard the name of Jesus and do not know about the life and freedom that he came to offer them. We hope that one day all of them come to know that he is searching for them as his treasure and that they will say yes to him.

What do you see on your way to school? Maybe as you travel, however you go and whatever you see, you could use that time to pray for us and the people we pass each day.

Baptist Magazine is the magazine produced for the Baptist Churches of New Zealand. Our aim is to encourage, inspire and empower you as a follower of Jesus Christ to build each other up in faith and in growing in spiritual maturity and love.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28:19

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up
1 Thessalonians 5:11